Patricia Highsmith

Associated Press

Patricia Highsmith (Jan. 19, 1921 - Feb. 5, 1995) was an American writer whose tales of gentlemen murderers and psychological intrigue were often explorations of her own obsessions. Among her 22 books, she is best known for "Strangers on a Train," which Alfred Hitchcock made into a movie in 1951, and "The Talented Mr. Ripley," made into a film with Matt Damon and Jude Law in 1999. Both novels feature sociopaths and murder.

Ms. Highsmith, who was born in Fort Worth and raised in Manhattan, spent most of her life in Europe, living first in England, then in France and finally in southern Switzerland. She died at 74 in 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland, near where she had lived since 1982.

Joan Schenkar, Highsmith's enterprising biographer ("The Talented Miss Highsmith," St. Martin's Press, 2009) culled from the writer's 38 identical-looking notebooks that Highsmith called ''cahiers'' and referred to as ''comfortable personal outgushings'' as well as her separate diaries. There were also charts, maps, diagrams and plans. In 1945 Highsmith created a chart to compare and contrast some, though hardly all, of the women who were her lovers and to describe them with clinical detachment. For someone who eventually developed a reputation as a cantankerous old shut-in, Highsmith emerges in the biography as a surprisingly romantic, hot-blooded, sociable and social-climbing creature.

In her old age, Highsmith was characterized by her virulent racism and anti-Semitism, in which she used numerous pseudonyms to inveigh against Israel. Whatever innate characteristics she might have been born with, the circumstances that tortured Highsmith through her life included: a self-loathing of her lesbianism; resentment that she didn't gain entry to New York's highest social stratum; and a destructive love-hate relationship with her mother, Mary, who, when Patricia was 12, left the heartbroken child to live in Fort Worth with her grandmother for a year.

Ms. Highsmith often said that she disliked being classified as a crime writer and many reviewers tended to agree. Graham Greene, with whom Ms. Highsmith frequently corresponded, called her a "writer who has created a world of her own — a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger."

{"type":"article","show_header_text":false,"header":"ARTICLES ABOUT PATRICIA HIGHSMITH","query":"(per=\"HIGHSMITH, PATRICIA\") and tom!=\"Caption\" and tom!=\"Correction\" and tom!=\"List\" and tom!=\"Paid Death Notice\" and dsk!=\"Society\"","search_query":"(persons:\"HIGHSMITH, PATRICIA\") AND -type_of_material:\"Caption\" AND -type_of_material:\"Correction\" AND -type_of_material:\"List\" AND -type_of_material:\"Paid Death Notice\" AND -news_desk:\"Society\"","num_search_articles":"10","show_summary":true,"show_byline":true,"show_pub_date":true,"hide_thumbnails":false,"show_kicker":false,"show_title":false,"show_related_topics":true,"show_rad_links":true,"show_subtopics":true,"exclude_topics":"HIGHSMITH, PATRICIA","more_on_header":"MORE ON PATRICIA HIGHSMITH AND:","alternate_index_subidx":"","show_thumbnails":true}

February 8, 2009, Sunday

Reviews of crime novels: “Cold in Hand,” by John Harvey; “The Killing Circle,” by Andrew Pyper; and “The Pyramid,” by Henning Mankell. Also: new editions of classics from Patricia Highsmith and Donald E. Westlake.